Got An Affiliate Marketing Blog? Here's Some Help

I'd love it if more affiliate marketeers would put their views down in blogs - so we can progress the industry and get to know each other.

This blog may not be the highest trafficked - I'm generally not concerned with off-topic posts about general crap and I don't go out of my way to get every man and his robotic-dog to the site either. I'm more interested in attracting active affiliate marketeers as well as hopefully giving my experiences to those just entering the industry.

So here goes, the stats of this site, keywords and marketing strategies that gained it traffic in 2007.

Visits


I was a slow to get into the site and really find a style that I found comfortable with. I was not really focused on trying to fix the industry's ills at first, basically I waffled about inane rubbish in the early months. When I started writing about pertinent stuff people started visiting more. I suppose that's a lesson for any blog.

Where Visitors Came From
There were 247 different sites that delivered traffic. I won't print the whole list, but here are some highlights (I'll linkafy them latter - just dashing out):

• Affiliates4u.com
• Google Organic
• Direct (ok so this isn't another site)
• Bumpzee
• a4uforum.co.uk
• here.org.uk (thanks Kieron - but not all were nice comments)
• internetmarketingblogs.co.uk
• Google.com referral (I'll have to check that badboy out)
• Stumbleupon.com
• Digg.com
• affiliateprogramadvice.com (thanks Jess)
• netvibes.com
• kiethbond.co.uk (thanks Kieth)
• bloglines.com
• sphinn.com
• mybloglog
• Mooseontheloose.co.uk (thanks Paul)
• Technorati
• onelittleduck.co.uk (thanks Jason)
• affiliateblog.co.uk (thanks Fraser)
• google.co.uk
• dfinitive.com
• Yahoo!
• exwebjunkie.com (thanks James)
• 5staraffliliateprograms.com
• DavidFiske.com (thanks David)
• 3wdl.co.uk (thanks James again)
• googlewebbmastercentral.blogpost.com
• aol
• facebook
• affiliatestuff.co.uk
• webaffiliate
• affiliatemarketingblog.co.uk (thanks supercod)
• affiliatefortunecookies.com
• lammo.net (thanks John)
  
• jamesavery.co.uk (thanks James)
• live
• azam.info (thanks Nadeem)
• searchengineland
• peterdickenson.com (thanks Pistol)
  
• affiliatetip.com
• affiliatewidow.co.uk (thanks Jules)
  
• blog.webgains.co.uk
• chris-boshop.blogspot.com
• davidnaylor.com
  

Do you see a trend? Well there's an awful lot of other affiliate blogs linking in. I've also got some agencies and networks linking in. Write content that interests other affiliates and they'll comment on what you say and expand on it. It all helps.

But not all those links came from links in posts, some came from comments that I'd left - especially on the Google blogs. If you have a blog and want others to visit yours, contribute to other blogs.

But don't be too overt - I can't stand these blog posts purely aimed at getting links for examples, pictures of messy desks etc. They work but they're crap if you ask me!

Keywords

I'm sure you know already, but you'll get traffic from keywords you never thought you'd get. In fact I got traffic from 2,247 keywords in 2007, most of them were pretty obscure. Obviously I thought some people would search on my name (not being vain), but "facebook bnp" was a bit of a surprise, I commented on Facebook's over-reaction and it got picked up well. There's a tip for you, comment on stuff in the news early on and you'll get traffic from it.

Also I occasionally go slightly off topic, the final stage in the e-commerce process (apart from after sales customer support) is the delivery. 2007 saw me get outraged with crap couriers, and my post about City Link still gets traffic now. So there's another tip: comment on what people are interested in, or gets their back up!

Most Popular Posts/Pages
The top four were me playing around with the title tag of the homepage. But after that the most popular posts were:

• Another Look At Brand Name Bidding
• Meet The Network: Webgains
• PPC Miss-Spelling Tool
• Meet The Network: dgm
• Why I Effectively Left Affiliate Marketing
• What Will Affiliate Marketing Be Like In 5 Years?
• 10 Top Tips: Successful Affiliate Marketing During a Recession
• You Can't Make Money With Facebook ... What A Load Of ...

Perhaps the thing to take away from this information is that you shouldn't be afraid to:

• Write about controversial topics
• Piss people off
• Take time writing content for the benefit of others
• Write about stuff some people may think is boring
• Write about stuff at the fringes of affiliate marketing
• Vent your spleen
• Open your self up to criticism
• Be honest
• Share some of your secrets
• Help others
• Ask questions
• Allow dissenting voices on your blog

I hope you found it useful.